Among the fields involving cell culture, cell therapy is the least advanced in terms of industrialization. There is therefore a great need to find a technology capable of producing cells in sufficient quantity and in optimal conditions for these cells to be used for therapeutic applications.
Some cell therapy processes require culture or expansion of stem cells before reinjection into a patient, because the samples taken are sometimes insufficient to present a therapeutic effect. It is essential to ensure the integrity of the therapeutic properties of cells during cultivation. In the prior art, solutions for growing stem cells ex vivo are crafty, empirical and quite inefficient.
Moreover, the current technique does not allow producing stem cells in sufficient quantities for therapeutic applications. There is therefore a real need to develop a type of bioreactor with a compact geometry allowing the growth of cells in large quantities.
There are proposals using bioreactors for stem cell culture. However, the amplification phase is still a manual step and environmental conditions for cell culture (temperature, CO2, etc. . . . ) are not monitored with high precision.
Existing examples of perfusion bioreactors with membranes, hollow fiber bioreactors, fluidized bed, and micro-bioreactors with continuous infusion of O2, nutrient medium and growth factors are known.
Patent Application US-A1-2008/0118977 describes a treatment protocol for reconstructing a patient's heart after an infarct. The reconstruction is obtained by injecting into the heart of the patient specific stem cells (CD34+), isolated from a blood sample, expanded ex vivo and purified after culture.